No words

"No words." "I have no words."

This is now a thing people say when reacting to tragedy or when offering words of comfort in times of suffering or loss.

"No words," they say, with a sad shake of the head, or with a gesture of the hand to the heart.

It sounds solemn and sad and dignified. It has the virtue of avoiding foolish woods or statements that turn out to be more about the speaker than the bereaved, and people who have listened to the condolences of long lines of friends and acquaintances at funerals and memorial services know that there are words that would have been better avoided. To say "no words" deeply, with emotion, as your hand moves to some place near your throat can be genuinely kind as it is unimposing.

But it bothers me, because if we can't find words to share and shape our feelings, can't find words to communicate and specify feelings in this moment--well, what hope is there for us miserable human beings? Complex language is what sets us apart from other mammals, what makes it possible to collaborate and compromise and work things out. Presence, embraces, sympathetic faces are all important, but they cannot do what words do. Words are out there at the edges where we challenge ourselves to understand, where we reach for words to be returned to us, in affirmation, agreement, antithesis.

And yet—tonight I have no words.

Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the death of my son Kris. And what I feel I am not feeling in words, I cannot describe in words. There is a space in my chest where, when I inhale and raise the floodgates, everything Kris flows in--what it was like to be around him, his grin, his love, his four-year-old charm, his flashes of anger, his pride, his enthusiasm, his conversation, his maturity. His fierceness in the fight against ALS. His desire to stay and be present for those he loved even as death came closer and closer, a fight that was hard, but worth it (his words).

I can feel those things like he's still here, and those feelings are so strong, so particular to Kris and his Kris-ness, that trying to put words to them is all but useless. Somewhere, perhaps, in the epigrammatic world of poetry (in Emily Dickenson perhaps?) there may be words that fit and surprise the moment, that talk about the ache of grief and hint at the unwillingness to let it go--but I do not know what these words are. I do know that the mental labor of finding them and typing them is a process far apart from feeling the feelings.

So where I find myself tonight, grieving the death of my oldest child, is in a place where I have no words. Where it's hard to write. Where words never quite get it right. (This is happening in 21st century America where the meaning of words is endlessly and unethically manipulated, un-attaching them from stable, felt, rational truth.)

In words I would love to tell you about my son--Eliza and Kurt's brother, Michelle's husband, Dan's and Mark's and Tim's and Jeff's and John's friend. And I hope to find all  those words and more someday. But now, this last week of July in 2019, I have no words, only that place in my heart where Kris, child of my body, still smiles at me.